Being first often means being the best, unless of course you’re the first known person to wreck a brand new sports car. We’ve seen the first crashed MKV Toyota Supra and even a few pre-production C8 Corvettes bite the dust ahead of launch, but this totaled 2020 Porsche Taycan Turbo is a hard one to stomach.
The battered Taycan currently sits at a New Jersey Copart lot awaiting a transferable title so it can be sold to the highest bidder. At first glance, the $165,270 all-electric sports sedan doesn’t seem to be too damaged—a few scrapes on the front-end, a dismounted front tire, and a cracked wheel. But upon closer inspection, the fine details start to emerge.
Copart lists the primary damage as being located on the “undercarriage,” which unfortunately isn’t visible by the photos; however, we can get an idea just how bad it might be by looking at some of the other apparent problems. We can see that the car is supported by bricks, while a part—perhaps a coolant line for the battery pack and rear drive unit—appears to be hanging from the bottom of the car. The rear suspension seems to be unusually low, and one of the back wheels’ alignment is certainly out-of-spec. The driver’s side airbags are also deployed.
We’re not sure what happened to this Taycan for it to be considered a total loss by the seller, which is listed as State Farm Insurance by Copart, but the subtle damage certainly raises some eyebrows on repair costs. Knowing that the Taycan keeps its batteries nested in a metal box on the underside of the car could potentially point at significant cell damage, though this isn’t mentioned anywhere in the auction.
To our knowledge, it’s the first such example of a wrecked Taycan Turbo to be offered up for sale at a salvage auction. Unfortunately, we’re not sure how many miles are actually on the car. Copart did explain to The Drive that it was unable to restore power to get an accurate reading from the digital odometer. Title records for the car indicate that it was first sold on Dec. 27, 2019, for $165,270—a bit higher than the $150,900 base price, meaning there were a few pricey options tacked on. And considering that the very first Taycan in the U.S. was sold on Dec. 20, we’d have to estimate that this was one of the first 130 cars sold stateside.
Perhaps the 670-horsepower sedan was too much for the driver to handle, or maybe some other non-speed-related circumstance landed the car at a salvage auction. Regardless, if the car sells at a low enough price, we might soon see the first Taycan-swapped ICE car, but we aren’t holding our breath.
h/t: Motor1
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